The need to monitor the integrity of structural elements arises in many different applications. For example, it is necessary to monitor the structures of commercial aircraft. These aircraft stay in service for many years and may experience various working environments. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly check the structural integrity of the vehicle as part of any prudent maintenance program. Conventional testing techniques such as visual inspection, x-ray, dye penetrant, and electrical field techniques (e.g., eddy current testing, etc.) for testing structural elements have many drawbacks.
Visual inspection of structural members often requires some degree of disassembly of the structure. This adds greatly to the overall testing cost. Commercial aircraft must be regularly inspected for structural integrity. However, visual inspection of aircraft structures often requires substantial disassembly of structure and removal of installed equipment in order to provide the access needed to view normally inaccessible areas of interest at a distance adequate to detect corrosion visually. For example, regular visual inspections to detect the presence of potential corrosion of metallic floor structure in wet areas of aircraft, such as behind sidewalls and under lavatories, galleys, and entry doors, can be burdensome. These time-consuming and costly inspections often reveal that the structure has no corrosion. Additionally, floor panel removal requires that factory seals be broken. Moreover, since there is a risk that the quality of the resealing may not be as high as the original factory seals, initial inspections may actually make the structure more susceptible to corrosion thereafter.
Sensors have been used to detect the presence of moisture in the inaccessible areas of a commercial aircraft, but once detected it can still be time-consuming and costly to obtain access to such areas in order to remove the moisture and thereby prevent the buildup of corrosion.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method which both identifies the presence of moisture in an inaccessible area of an aircraft and removes such moisture.